Translate timestamps into another language

By default, PHP displays timestamps in English. Since SimplePie's get_date() method relies on PHP's date() function, get_date() is English-only. However, in SimplePie 1.0 we introduced get_local_date() which leverages PHP's strftime() function which is designed to translate timestamps into other languages.

get_local_date() accepts values that are accepted by strftime(). We also need to call PHP's setlocale() function prior to using this method. setlocale() has it's own set of issues with region/language codes. It only supports whatever is installed in your PHP installation, and some servers require two or three-letter codes.

• Sample language codes
• Sample region codes
• http://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-2_codes
• http://www.google.com/search?q=RFC4646

This will ONLY work for items that have timestamps.

• Supported in SimplePie 1.0.
• Code in this tutorial should be compatible with PHP 4.3 or newer, and should not use PHP short tags, in order to support the largest number of PHP installations.

// Set the region/language to Canadian French
setlocale(LC_TIME, 'fr_CA');
 
// As we loop through items, display the formatted, localized date.
foreach($feed->get_items() as $item) {
	echo '<p>' . $item->get_title() . ' ' . $item->get_local_date('%A %e %B %Y') . '</p>';
}